Sunday, June 01, 2008

MGP3 - Petrosian

So, I read My Great Predecessors 1 and 2, and they have all these great games where you see the world champions whoop butt on their opponents. Now I'm reading the first chapter in volume 3 on Petrosian, and ...

Game 2 (Zurich CT 1953) - Reshevsky has strong pressure all game but Petrosian defends well and gets the draw (by the way, in this same line at Zurich, Taimanov soundly thumped Petrosian and Smyslov had a won position although that game was drawn)

Game 3 (USSR Ch 1958) - Tal has strong pressure all game but Petrosian defends well and gets the draw

Game 4 (Varna Ol 1962) - Gligoric has strong pressure all game but Petrosian defends well and gets the draw

Game 5 (San Antonio 1972) - Portisch has strong pressure all game but Petrosian defends well and gets the draw

Game 8 (Amsterdam CT 1956) - Colorless draw with Bronstein

Given that only 22 games (excluding the losses to other players featured in the book and the two wins against Kasparov) were needed, surely Kasparov could have found sufficient GOOD games by Petrosian to fill up the required number of slots rather than giving us this slop.